Valuing ancient forest ecosystems: An analysis of backcountry hiking in Jasper National Park

This study examines backcountry visitors' preferences for truly ancient forest ecosystems. We find that visitors consider ancient forests a distinctly different ecosystem than mature, but younger forests dominated by the same tree types, and that the recreational value of forests continues to grow for several hundred years following a crown fire. By employing a random coefficients model of utility the analysis is able to provide measures of the variability in preferences for forest ecosystems across the population of users. The model also shows that site choice probabilities and welfare effects associated with ancient woodlands are sensitive to the mix of dominating tree types, and exhibit substantial fluctuation over trails.